We made characters last night for a Classic Marvel game (Advanced Set) I'll be running. It'll probably be a few weeks before we get the game started, as I'm sure we'll wait until our current D&D adventure is complete.

I haven't played the game (other than the basic set with my son) since I was a teen, and if it had any glaring problems at the time they were covered well by the GM. Anyone here remember (or still play) this game? Are there major problems I should watch out for?

For rolling characters I lte them roll stats and then assign, and let them pick powers. They're more powerful than starting characters because of it, but totally random character creation tends to use our group's luck to give everyone characters that are exactly opposite what they wanted to play.

We've currently got:

Captain Obvious: A guy with shrinking, mental bolts, and energy touch.

The Shield: A guy with Force Field, mental bolts, and Flight

Winter's Chill: A guy with Cold Missile Weapon, Ice Generation, and Invisibility

Unnamed Batmanesque dude: A guy (see a apttern) with Ultimate Skill (Martial Arts B), Ultimate Skill (Acrobatics), and Mechanical Intuition

Unnamed Vampire Type: A guy with Regeneration and Health Drain Touch. He picked Regeneration to use in conjunction with a power stunt later to let him transfer health from himself to others via Health Drain Touch.

The vampire guy's powers may change around since it looks like learning the double slot powers doesn't cost double karma. He hasn't decided yet if he'll start with thre powers and then save up karma for health drain touch or not.

They've all got good stats, so I'll probably look at the Avengers and X-Men modules to start us off. Presumably those are higher power level than the basic modules.

Looks cool!  Let us know how it works out.

I had the Basic and Advanced sets as a kid, though I was too young and impatient to put together a coherent scenario to play through.

I remember spending hours reading up on the different stuff you could buy with Unearthly wealth and such.

Makes me want to dig them up again.

I tend to use the modelling system rather than the random roll, but sometimes its nice just to see what happens. Usually I do this just for fun and try and figure out how the powers fit as a mental exercise.

Currently I'm only running the Shadow X-men: Beneath a Black Cross campaign. My friends were delighted I'd found their old 'Spider-guys' PC Sheets.


Spider-Guys began when both of them were late teens, and one of them being the big goofy person he is was flipping through my Marvel game books and said 'Loki what a dweeb' or something to that effect. Knowing they both loved Spider-man, it gave me an idea. I transported them (via Loki, who was annoyed) from "the real world" to the Marvel U--so the characters were based on the players (very V&V in that respect) the Spider-Man power set was warped a bit by differences of personality. One got Danger Sense, Gliding, higher agility but lower Strength. The other got higher strength, wall-crawling through 'claw' ridges on his fingertips--this was all Prior to Spiderman 2099 btw. Anyway I may be reupping that campaign, I recently picked up the "almost last" supplement for MSH the Webs boxed set and plan on using it to spin them threw some interesting webslinging filled adventures.  Albeit, I'm going to try and create more custom enemies for them particularly. I think I'll be giving them like 5000 Karma, and telling them that they need to create the last few years of 'Marvel U' life that covers the actual time since we last played.


I may also play in a Street Level MSH game depending on my friends choice (trying to talk him into Hearts & Souls which is simpler and faster, and more what I want out of gaming these days) but I won't mind too much if its Old MSH.


One of my first "web released' adventures is still out there on the web, short silly and mad...

One thing you might consider is giving a damage bump or +1 rank for a Yellow hit, +2 ranks for a Red hit.

I used to houserule that and it went a long way to adding a little variability to damage, which I liked.

You also might consider nerfing the XP system as the character you start with tends to be the character you have if you run it by the book.

Chuck

Quote from: James McMurrayFor rolling characters I lte them roll stats and then assign, and let them pick powers. They're more powerful than starting characters because of it, but totally random character creation tends to use our group's luck to give everyone characters that are exactly opposite what they wanted to play.

hey James,
Over on my blog i copied an old polyhedron article for adapting a point based system to MSH. It might help as another optionfor your group to use for character generation. here is the LINK to the specific post.

Another place which is like a Mecca for all things to do with MSH is:
Classic Marvel.Com
The site has character write ups. downloadable PDF's of most of the books and adventures, alternate rules. character generators, and all kinds of other stuff. it's a goldmine of stuff.
Jeff

Oh yeah, I've got that site bookmarked and every single pdf downloaded. Between the printed adventures and the Dragon ones I may never have to rub two imagination sticks together and come up with something original.

As always I'll tinker with everything I run, but I don't have the time to actually create things from scratch.

Man, makes ME wanna play.  The game's utter, breezy simplicity really supports and encourages knock-down, drag-out comic book adventures.  I'm proud to own it.

But, uh, I think I might start lookin' for an Advanced set when the money comes back...

Follow that link. Marvel released all the MSH rules and accessories as free pdf downloads and they're almost all available at classicmarvel.com.

Officedepot.com has a glitch in their online software (I assume it's a glitch): it doesn't charge you per page if you use normal paper. I had the Judges book, Player's book, and Ultimate Powers book all printed for just over $21.00. If there's not an Office Depot near you they offer free shipping in the U.S.

....haikeeba.

EDIT:  I <3 BROADBAND

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Man, makes ME wanna play.  The game's utter, breezy simplicity really supports and encourages knock-down, drag-out comic book adventures.  I'm proud to own it.

But, uh, I think I might start lookin' for an Advanced set when the money comes back...

funny, it seems that this is the kind of gaming people want to do lately. fast, fun, lets roll dice and kick ass kinda gaming. I see lots of systems out there promising to deliver what MSH has had all along. And yet when I tried to get my friends to play it when it came out in the 80's, they wouldnt touch it with a ten foot pole. they were die hard champions snobs. the idea that a round of combat didnt have to take 45 minutes was totally alien to them.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Man, makes ME wanna play.  The game's utter, breezy simplicity really supports and encourages knock-down, drag-out comic book adventures.  I'm proud to own it.

But, uh, I think I might start lookin' for an Advanced set when the money comes back...

And by the way Doc- I heard you and Iron Gauntlets broke up. I know MSH is a little older than IG but maybe you should try to hit somma that on the rebound.

Don't get me wrong, I like HERO a lot, too.  I just like to have a wide palette of options availamable to me, y'know?

Availamable.

Uh...anyway, yeah.  I think that my desire to just cut loose and roll is tied to the fact that I obsessed over the art and craft of gamemastering for so long, and now I'm just going, "Okay, great.  Now to actually DO IT."  Which is a lot of what my blog is about, when it's not about getting depressed because I can't find DVDs or dreams about George Pal.  

that said, I downloaded a buncha buncha sruff from yon faire webbesighte and although I dunno if my wife would like the system, I may springit on her one night.  "Hey, honey, wanna have a quick, nigh-pointless game where you beat the crap out of mooks and stuff?  You can have whatever stats you want..."

That'll hook her.

Advanced MSH isn't all that "breezy and light" to be fair it has a lot of structure--compared to many games of its day it was relatively light, but its got a cement solid foundation. However its A HUGE inspiration on Hearts & Souls (albeit different mechanics and H&S is lighter..). MSH is a good game still one of my friends absolute favorite for superheroes (and its in my top 3 so..)

Albeit sit down and read the rules. Seriously read them through. You'll find many wonderful things that are answered in the game that some people miss. (Specific  individuals who fucked up reading rolls on the rules and try and use that as justification for it being "broken" shall not be named.)



Just for a hoot:
http://members.fortunecity.com/tystates/tergenis.htm

Short, sweet origin adventure.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!"Hey, honey, wanna have a quick, nigh-pointless game where you beat the crap out of mooks and stuff?  You can have whatever stats you want..."

Shit, Doctor. I've run entire campaigns on that paradigm you just enumerated.
I'll call it Rotwang-ism, and get myself a Cult of Personality. :cool: